Just when that good Jem had gone on—such a fellow he is, too! keeps his old father like a prince!—another sort of a figure appeared before the light; and, bless me, to think I should have forgotten that circumstance!—of course it was the same figure that started so suddenly past me that evening when I stood looking for Sarah at the gate. He took off his hat to me, in the half light, and stopped. I stopped also, I cannot tell why. So far as I could see, a handsome young man, not so dark as one expects to see an Italian, and none of that sort of French showman look—you know what I mean—that these sort of people generally have: on the contrary, a look very much as if he were a gentleman; only, if I may say it, more innocent, more like a child in his ways than the young men are now-a-days. I did not see all this just in a moment, you may be sure. Indeed, I rather felt annoyed and displeased when the stranger stopped me on the road—my own road, that seemed to belong to me as much as the staircase or corridor at home. If he had not been possessed of a kind of ingratiating, conciliatory sort of manner, as these foreigners mostly have, I should scarcely have given him a civil answer, I do believe.
“Pardon, Madame”—not Madam, you perceive, which is the stiffest, ugliest word that can be used in English—and I can’t make out how, by putting an e to the end of it, and laying the emphasis on the last syllable, it can be made so deferential and full of respect as the French word sounds to English ears—“pardon, Madame; I was taking the liberty to make inquiries in your village, and when I am so fortunate as to make an encounter with yourself, I think it a very happy accident. Will Madame permit me to ask her a question; only one,—it is very important to me?”
“Sir,” said I, being a little struck with his language, and still more with his voice, which seemed to recall to me some other voice I had once known, “you speak very good English.”
His hat was off again, of course, in a moment to acknowledge the compliment; but dark as it was, I could neither overlook nor could I in the least understand, the singular, half pathetic, melancholy look he gave me as he answered. “I had an English mother,” said the young foreigner; and he looked at me in the darkness, and in my complete ignorance of him, as if somehow I, plain Millicent Mortimer, a single woman over fifty, and living among my own people, either knew something about his mother, or had done her an injury, or was hiding her up somewhere, or I don’t know what. I could not tell anybody how utterly confounded and thunderstruck I was. I had nearly screamed out: “I? What do I know about your mother?” so much impression did it have on me. After all it is wonderful how these foreigners do talk in this underhand sort of way with their eyes. I declare I do not so much wonder at the influence they often get over young creatures. That sort of thing is wonderfully impressive to the imagination.
He paused quite in a natural, artful sort of way, to let the look have its full effect; and he must have seen I was startled too; for though I was old enough to have been his mother, I was, of course, but a plain Englishwoman, and had no power over my face.
“Madame,” said the stranger with a little more vehemence, and a motion of his arm which looked as if he might fall into regular gesticulating, just what disgusts one most, “to find the Countess Sermoneta is the object of my life!”
“I am very sorry I can’t help you,” said I, quite restored to myself by this, which I was, so to speak, prepared for; “I never heard of such a person; there’s no one of that name in this quarter, nor hasn’t been, I am sure, these thirty years.”
Seeing I was disposed to push past, my new acquaintance stood aside, and took off again that everlasting hat.
“I will not detain Madame,” he said in a voice that, I confess, rather went to my heart a little, as if I had been cruel to him; “but Madame will not judge hardly of my case. I came to find one whom I thought I had but to name; and I find her not, nor her name, nor any sign that she was ever here. Yet I must find her, living or dead; I made it a promise to my father on his death-bed. Madame will not wonder if I search, ask, look everywhere; I cannot do otherwise. Pardon that I say so much; I will detain Madame no more.”
And so he stood aside with another salute. Still he took off his hat like a gentleman—no sort of flourish—a little more distinctly raised from his head, perhaps, than people do now-a-days; but nothing in bad taste; and just in proportion to his declaration that he would not detain me, I grew, if I must confess it, more and more willing to be detained. I did not go on when he stood out of my way, but rather fell a little back, and turned more towards him than I had yet done. Dame Marsden had just lighted her lamp, and it cast a sort of glimmery, uncertain light upon the face of my new acquaintance; undeniably a handsome young man. I like good-looking people wherever I find them; and that was not all. Somehow, through his beard—which I daresay people who like such appendages would have thought quite handsome—there seemed to me to look, by glimpses, some face I had known long ago; and his voice, foreign as it was, had a tone, just an occasional indescribable note, which reminded me of some other voice, I could not tell whom belonging to. It was very strange; and one forgets stories that one has no personal interest in. Did I ever hear of any country person that had married an Italian? for somehow I had jumped to the conclusion that it was his mother he sought.